Novelty tournament

A novelty tournament is an outdated term for a quizbowl event that deviates from accepted tournament norms. The term was coined by Matt Weiner in goodpackets.zip.

Novelty tournaments were frequently, but not always, side events to regular tournaments. In modern usage, the term side event has expanded to become the standard way to refer to these tournaments.

Examples

Subject Tournaments

See: subject tournaments

Some novelty tournaments are subject tournaments that focus entirely on a single subject or set of subjects. Such novelty tournaments include the Chicago Open Literature Tournament or the Chicago Open History Tournament. Other novelty tournaments include "theme" packets.

Extraordinary Difficulty

Some novelty tournaments resemble regular tournaments, but are significantly more difficult. Examples include Ryan Westbrook's The Experiment and Jonathan Magin's Gaddis Experimental Tournament.

Small Teams Tournaments

Some novelty tournaments resemble regular tournaments in difficulty, distribution, and subject matter, but are intended for play by teams of one, two, or three players. These include the Jerry Vinokurov singles played as a side event to the 2006 Illinois Open.